“I…” He maneuvers back around and tries to move closer, but his crutches are sinking. He’s going to kill himself out in this sand. “Nothing. I just wanted to bring you something.”
“Yeah, a pie. Got it, thanks!”
“Yes,” he says, louder now. “A pie.”
I’m shaking, inside and out. “Why?”
For a long second he stands there, like he’s thinking about his words. “Because—PFE—right? And I want to be your friend again.”
“Friend?” The word hurts for a reason that makes no sense. Standing there, I realize I can’t go back to being his friend. I want more than that, and that’s not going to happen. “No. Friends don’t make friends ‘fall for them’ to prove them wrong. You really think I’m that easy?”
The corners of his mouth curve up slowly. “No, Nora. I don’t think you’re easy. I think you’re hard. You’re so hard. A total pain in the ass.”
Those words burn in me. I want to scream. “Oh, that’s just great!”
His hard eyes soften. “Yeah, and also, you’re the most amazing person I know,” he yells, trying to make his way closer to me.
Everyone is watching us. God, we’ll probably end up on YouTube.
“No!” I hold up my hand. “No, you don’t. You’re a liar. Go away with your evil pie of lies.”
Ari still has it, standing off to the side, watching us like a tennis match. I check to make sure he’s not getting upset. Meanwhile, his brother is almost in front of me.
He looks at me and grins. That stupid grin with the ridiculous dimple.
I’m not falling for it this time. “You think this is a joke? Just like these last few weeks? A big joke! Why? Why did you do it? Do you really hate me that much?”
My voice is shaking. I am shaking.
He’s oddly still. “No. I didn’t do it because I hate you.” His voice is solid and sure.
I don’t want to hear his excuses. I turn around and walk away, down the beach. I can’t listen to how he planned to hurt me. It’ll probably kill me.
“I did it because I love you!” he yells.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Eli
Yeah. I just said that. Out loud. It felt good.
“I love you,” I say it again like I’m trying the words on for size, and they fit. I need to be closer to her. I’m trying, but these goddamn crutches are not cooperating. I want to chuck them across the beach and walk over to her like a regular guy with two good knees. That’s not in the cards, though, so I just stand there looking like an idiot.
She laughs—it isn’t a good laugh. Great. I finally have the guts to say it, and she doesn’t believe me. I force the damn crutches to go and stab my way through the sand toward her. Get ready, Costas. Prepare for total rejection.
“Go ahead, Ari,” she says to my brother, who is still holding the pie. “You can have the whole thing.”
Her hands make fists and she plants them on her hips. Badass Nora Reid. Can’t tell her what to do or think.
She’s done talking, and my heart’s gonna fail it’s pumping so hard right now. I’m probably gonna break my knee for good trying to cross this beach. It takes forever, but finally, I get to her.
“You are a liar,” she says.
“I’m not lying.” It’s weird. I’m in sand, on crutches, in front of a girl in another dude’s hoodie. This doesn’t look good for me at all, I know that. So why have I never felt more confident in my life that I’m at the right place, at the right time? This is chance, and I’m lined up for the shot.
I take a deep breath. “I love you.”
She’s worried—biting the lip and scrunching her nose. “Fuck you,” she says.
Wow. I smile. “Nora. You hate that word.”
She crosses her arms. “So? Sometimes it’s the only word that works.”
Her hair blows in the breeze. Her wild hair. The brown eyes. Damn. They’re shining in the light of this giant-ass moon.
“You hurt me, Eli.”
I move closer, and she doesn’t back away. A good sign? “Yeah. I know. I was scared.” I have to tell her the truth—my only chance to make the goal is to give it 100 percent.
She gives me that I don’t believe you scowl. “Scared of what?”
I take a minute. I need to make sure the words are right. “The usual, I guess,” I finally say. “What if we suck? What if I lose you? All that bullshit.”
Her chin drops to her chest. “You made me fall in love with you.” Her voice breaks.
I move closer, forcing the crutches to do what I want. I’ll crawl to her if I have to. This is a story she needs to hear.
“Yeah, I admit, I tried,” I say. “But to be honest, you made me fall in love with you first.”
Her eyes lift, they’re doing the twinkling thing. God, she’s beautiful. “How do you know that?”
I feel the entire student body of EHS watching us. Hail Mary, baby.
“That first day, on Gigi’s porch,” I say. “Your hair that day looked exactly like it does now. Wild. Your teeth, all purple. Your giant eyes. You know your eyes are giant? Those things totally sucked me in. From that very first day—I loved you.”
Her gaze flutters to the sand, then jerks back up. “That’s not true.”
She still isn’t buying it, so I keep moving closer; I can’t stop now. She’s so stubborn, and sometimes to convince Nora Reid of something, you gotta get in her face.
“I wasn’t planning to ever tell you that,” I say. “Especially after that kiss. You wouldn’t have listened.” I drop one crutch, lean my weight on my good leg, hop the last little bit, and close the distance between us.
I use my free hand to reach out to her, now I’m close enough to smell her hair. I can’t describe that smell. It just smells like Nora, and it slays me. I move my arm around her waist, aware that she could take me down at any second.
She doesn’t. I reach her back, pull her close.
She just stands there, looking confused. I wonder if she’s about to topple me. I don’t care if she does.
“It wasn’t real,” she whispers. “The beach, the drives, the garage. You didn’t mean any of it.” Then she lifts her hand and touches the collar of my T-shirt. Her fingers brush my neck. I’m gonna die now.
Everything about her is attacking my senses, her smell, the sight of her, the sound of her breathing, the feel of her in my arms. “No,” I say. “I meant all of it. I thought you were trying to get your license so that you could go to Emory and start testing your hypothesis there. I thought you might find someone else. Someone who wasn’t me.”
She presses her lips together. I notice because I’m watching them now. “I wanted to drive because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought maybe you were affecting my results. That’s all it was. Because I hate driving. I really hate it.”
I laugh low. “I would have driven you around, for free, for the rest of time. That’s how much I love you.”
She studies me for what feels like an hour. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, the strange whoosh of blood rushing through my body. This is the moment. The ball is in the air. It might not be enough. It might crash to the earth. Game over. Please, Nora, catch the ball. Then she pulls away, and just when I think it’s all over—my heart, my life, the world—Nora reaches into the front pocket of her jeans and yanks out her keys. “Okay.” She winds up and tosses them out into the Gulf. There’s a distant splash, and she faces me again.
“I’m all yours,” she says.
My heart has stopped beating so I’m probably almost dead. The blood in my ears quiets.
What did she say?
“Yours?” I ask, in barely a whisper.
She nods once, puts her hands on my shoulders. “Yours.”
I pull her close, then closer, and she lets me. Now… Now I’m as close as I want to be. Almost.
Our noses touch. “Scientifically speaking, this will never work, you know,” she says.
Her lips, almost touching mine
I swear are giving off an electric charge. I feel the buzz. “I don’t give a damn about science. I just want to kiss you.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. You up for it, Einstein?”
The corners of her mouth turn up and she scrunches her nose. “I don’t know. When did you last have a Coke?”
“Funny,” I say, and as I lean in toward her, her eyelids flutter shut. She’s ready for the kiss. I smile and pull up short. “You know… There’s a chance I’ve improved a little since eighth grade.”
She laughs. I love that laugh.
“Yeah, but I’ve had more field experience.”
Now I laugh. You have to, staring into those big brown eyes, knowing you’re about to get everything you’ve ever wanted. Get caught up in those eyes and you’re a dead man. I let go, and they pull me under. I’m a goner.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Nora
He’s going to kiss me. Not just any he—Eli Costas is going to kiss me. For the second time.
I try to take it all in. Not like a heroine in a romance novel, heart racing and head in the clouds. I am a scientist. I notice details. Make observations.
Eli, this close, is even more handsome. He smells good, clean and soapy. His chin is clean shaven. His hair is perfectly messy, like he put some effort into it. I wonder if he predicted this happening tonight? Or did he just hope for a positive outcome?
I notice he’s wearing the blue-green T-shirt that I love so much. He’s got on his glasses, too, like he knew that would be the nail in the coffin.
He touches my face gently and I wait. For what?
Well, for the reaction, I guess. That’s what we scientists do.
I take note of how sure he seems when he closes the space between us, how determined he is. When our lips touch, it’s like they’re relieved to get this second chance. Like they’ve been waiting for it all these years. They know exactly what to do and where to go.
It’s easy.
I observe that I am sinking into this kiss, that it covers me, like lowering myself into a hot bath. It’s soothing and exhilarating, all at the same time.
The whole party claps and cheers for us, and finally, we pull apart. I feel drunk, though I’ve only had two sips of beer, and his lips are still in front of me, already calling me back.
“I guess you’re going to need a ride home?” he whispers.
I suck in a breath and turn to the water, biting my lower lip. Why is he talking about driving at a time like—
I gasp. “Oh my God.” I look to the vast, dark horizon where I will never, ever find my keys, and my stomach sinks a little bit. Why did I do that? Mom is going to kill me. I should dive in and look for them anyway, except Eli is holding me close, and I don’t want him to stop.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” he says. “I would have driven you anyway.”
I give the ocean one last pitiful glance, and then let myself settle back into his embrace. “I was trying to prove a point.”
“Just like always,” he says, and we kiss again. And again. I hope the agains never end. I hope I get to do this forever.
In the end, Gigi was right. Her earthquake was not my earthquake.
It was our second kiss that proved my hypothesis.
It wasn’t just a kiss, of course. When our lips touched, it was like a law of physics that, like the pull of gravity, felt solid, strong, reliable. Bigger than me, bigger than Eli. Bigger than both of us.
A little bit of science.
A little bit of chaos.
But mostly, magic.
Epilogue
Nora
I’m almost home. Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I can’t wait.
I pass the sign off the highway, Welcome to Edinburgh. Home of the Highlanders, and I feel a pang of homesickness. I’ve missed it here. I haven’t been back since I left for Atlanta in late August, which is less than I’d planned. Between work and studying and going to class, I have no time. I’m knee-deep in science and I love it.
Mom makes sure to FaceTime me every time she visits Gigi, who still has her good days and bad. Whether or not she remembers me, though, I know that she loves me, and somewhere in the locked-up parts of her brain, she knows exactly who I am.
I’m not going straight home. Someone is waiting for me at the Mermaid. When I pull in, I park my car next to his. I hop out so fast I almost forget to turn off the engine and when I slide into his front seat, not a word passes between us before we’re kissing and I want to rip his shirt off.
Someone honks next to us. It’s Mr. Stark, who owns the funeral home, waving hello.
I fix my shirt and wave back.
“Hi,” I finally say to Eli and laugh. My smile is too big, I can feel it. I can’t control it. It’s going to eat my face.
“Hey,” he says. He’s wearing his glasses. Oh God. I want him so bad.
I kiss him again, I don’t care about Mr. Stark or anyone else who might walk by. We kiss hard and deep and I never want to stop kissing Eli Costas.
When we finally break apart, his palm rests on my cheek, his fingers play with my hair. He breathes me in. “God, it’s so good to see you.”
He came up for a visit in October. He got to know my roommates and my friends, and got to see the campus. We explored Atlanta, and each other. We even got tattoos, his on his biceps, mine hidden on my hip. Pi symbols, of course, a blend of science and pie. I thought it was extremely clever.
“I wish school wasn’t so far away,” I say.
He takes my hand when I start to pick at some peeling plastic on his dashboard and gives me a warning look. “Don’t start picking on Scottie Pippen.” He named the car after one of Michael Jordan’s teammates, apparently. “He’s gotta last a while.” He leans in again, until I feel the heat of his breath on my lips and I can’t see straight. “So I can come and see you.”
We have a tentative plan. Eli’s going to major in business, get his degree, and then move up to Atlanta when I move on to graduate school. He’s talked about someday opening his own bakery, and if I can be with him—and have pie whenever I want—that would be incredible.
Lacrosse, of course, will always be in the picture. He loves his new coach and the team. His knee is good and he has dreams of maybe making the Olympic team if that actually happens.
I moan, wishing we could be together sooner. “Four years…”
He looks at me with so much love and pushes back my hair. “Three and a half, more like.”
He puts his hand on the back of my head and pulls me close until our foreheads touch. “Don’t worry. No matter what, we’ll be fine. We’re meant to be. It’s been proven, scientifically.”
“It has?”
“Yeah,” he says, “and by one of the world’s most up-and-coming research scientists.”
“Oh?”
His dimple deepens. “Yeah. You’ve heard of her. Super smart. Super hot?”
“Hmm.” I twist up my mouth. “Not ringing any bells.”
“Yes, you know her. She’s totally in love with me. And I’m totally in love with her.” His lips find mine again. This kiss, every kiss with Eli, takes over all my senses, all my nerves, all my muscles, all my everything.
“Oh, that scientist,” I whisper as his lips move to my neck and the world spins on its axis, all the laws of physics and nature and love working together in perfect harmony, exactly as they should.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my agent, Danielle Chiotti, for your faith in me, for always cheering me on and for convincing me to take a chance on romance. Thank you to my editor, Heather Howland, who has taught me more about writing in the last year than I could have imagined. I so look forward to the next book, and the next. To the staff of Entangled Publishing from Liz Pelletier and Stacy Abrams to Heather Riccio and my publici
ty team, Melissa Montovani, Riki Cleveland, and Holly Bryant-Simpson, to Crystal Havens, and April Martinez for an amazing cover, to the copy-editing team including Curtis Svehlak, and everyone else who has had a hand in this book, thank you! I love working for such a dynamic and forward-thinking company run by such great people.
Thanks always to my writing friends. I hope you know who you are. Just in case: WWFC, the LODers, the YaHous, SCBWI Houston, and Illinois, Kristin Rae, the Class of 2k11, Amy Fellner Dominy, who read an early draft of this book, the authors of Empire Café, all the lovely bloggers and librarians. I am truly blessed to bask in the glow of your talent and generosity, and to call you my friends.
To friends and family who don’t write, but nevertheless have to put up with me—I’m sorry, and thank you. I also hope you know who you are, but I’ll mention by name my amazing husband, Michael, who cooks and cleans and works so hard, and makes me feel so loved. My beautiful, smart daughters and my favorite readers, Cate and Lily. Thanks Sam, too. To my extended family, far and near, especially my parents and siblings (both in-law and out), nieces and nephews, thank you for inspiring and encouraging me. To friends who are always there for me, your support means the world.
Thank you to Cindy, Ethan, and Evan Gant, whose lacrosse expertise was invaluable in the writing of this book. You are the greatest!
Many thanks to the educators, paras and students in the SFE SPEAK program, for teaching me a little something about the beauty and complexities of the human mind and heart.
Finally, thanks to God for all of my blessings and the talents You’ve entrusted to me. I get to do what I love every day, and I am forever grateful.
About the Author
Christina Mandelski loves to bring the characters in her head to life on the page. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys spending time with her family, traveling and reading (preferably under an umbrella at the beach). Chris lives with her husband and two daughters in Houston. You can visit her at www.christinamandelski.com.
The First Kiss Hypothesis Page 20